The woman said to the kid, “Hungry?”
“Famished.”
She pulled deer jerky and an orange from her pack and offered them.
“Wouldn’t mind some hot soup,” the kid said.
“No fires,” the tall man told him.
“He won’t be here for a long time,” the kid said.
“The smoke would be visible for miles. And the smell would carry, too,” the tall man said.
The kid laughed. “Think there’s anybody besides us way the hell out here this time of year?”
“Out here, you never know. Enjoy your jerky and orange.”
The tall man walked away, studying the whole of the lake below. The wall fell off in a vertical cliff face, a tall palisade several hundred yards long. A few aspen had taken root and clung miraculously to the hard, bare rock, but they didn’t obscure the view. There was nowhere on the lake that wasn’t visible from that vantage. The woman followed him.
“He’s too young,” she said with a note of gall. “I told you.”
“He’s strong in the right ways. And a far better shot than me or you, if it comes to that.”
He looked back at the kid, who’d already eaten his jerky and was peeling the orange while intently studying the place along the shoreline where the trees opened onto the portage. The woman was right. He was young. Seventeen. He’d never killed a man, but that’s what he was there for. To do this thing, if necessary.
“When the time comes,” the tall man said, “if he has to do it, he’ll be fine.” He turned from the woman and rejoined the others.
The man with the formless nose said, “Sat phone’s a problem. These clouds.”
“Did you get through?”
“Only enough to say we made it. Then I lost the signal.”
“That’ll do.”
The kid sat on a rock and cradled his rifle in his lap. He leaned forward and looked at the lake, the trees, the shoreline, the place where the man would come.
“Does he have a name?” the kid asked.
“What difference does it make?” the woman said.
“I don’t know. Just wondered.”
“Everyone has a name,” the woman said.
“So what’s his?”
“Probably better you don’t know. That way, he’s just a target.”
The tall man said, “His name’s O’Connor. Cork O’Connor.”
The kid lifted his rifle, sighted at the shoreline.
Behind him, the woman whispered, “Bang.”
A CONVERSATION
Q: Thunder Bay was the first of your novels to step back in time—in this case, the 1920s, when series favorite Henry Meloux was a young man. Would you consider it the most romantic of your novels?
A: The theme of the story involves the sacrifices we’re willing to make in the name of love. But I’m not sure I would call the novel romantic. It certainly contains some of the most erotic scenes I’ve written in the series. It’s also my favorite Cork O’Connor novel because at heart it’s the story of Henry Meloux.
Q: Vermilion Drift goes back to Cork’s childhood in the 1960s. Did this exploration into his past mark another milestone in the series?
A: I enjoyed tremendously exploring an important period in Cork’s childhood. It allowed me not only to imagine Cork as a boy but also to imagine his father and mother. His parents were long dead when readers first met him in Iron Lake, but their profound influence in shaping him is alluded to many times across the course of the series. Whenever you explore the deep background of a character, you open yourself to surprises, and I think, in the end, you understand that character far better.
Q: Which novel in the Cork series have you received the most questions or comments about from readers? You say that Thunder Bay is your favorite novel in the series. What about your fans?
A: Fan favorites span just about every book in the series. My own belief is that very often readers’ favorites are the first they pick up in the series, whichever they happen to be. I love hearing from readers who tell me a more recent title is their favorite just as much as hearing from those for whom it’s Iron Lake. However, the book that has generated the most controversial response was Heaven’s Keep, because a significant character, one whom many readers had come to love, dies in the course of this story. Oh, did I break readers’ hearts with that one.
Q: As Cork’s children—Jenny, Annie, and Stephen—have gotten older, they’ve played larger roles in Cork’s investigations. Jenny worked right beside Cork in Windigo Island, and Stephen got so involved he was shot in Tamarack County. Talk about the role that family plays in the series and how it’s evolved.
A: From the beginning, who Cork O’Connor is and how he conducts himself have been largely influenced by the fact that he’s a devoted father. His family is at the heart of all he loves. As his children have grown, become adults, they’ve quite naturally assumed larger roles in the stories. Sometimes a story will highlight a specific child, and sometimes all the children play significant roles. In Manitou Canyon, for example, the fifteenth book in the series, which will be published in September, it falls on the shoulders of Cork’s children, all of them working together, to save their father’s life. I’ve loved watching these kids grow up and become strong human beings. It’s felt to me like a very natural evolution.
Q: Like most crime series, yours contains violence. But unlike many other mysteries, how violence erupts is a real topic that is discussed and debated by Cork and other characters. After the events in Red Knife, Cork decides not to carry a weapon, until circumstances force him to in Trickster’s Point. His reasoning is that violence cannot occur without a weapon. But given his line of work, violence seems to always find him.
A: For me, Red Knife represented an exploration of violence in our culture. I was trying to get at some of the reasons that, in my opinion and despite our rhetoric to the contrary, we seem to pass violence down one generation to the next as a cultural norm. But Cork was born ogichidaa, an Ojibwe word that means “one who stands between evil and his people.” And so time and again, Cork finds himself in situations that result in violence, though he is not the instigator. It’s a kind of curse he cannot escape.
Q: In Vermilion Drift and Windigo Island, Cork’s investigations involve social issues that are as impactful as the crimes committed. Do you intentionally use the mystery formula to address issues that are important to you? Or is it the other way around? Do you find that the challenges we face today, whether they be sex trafficking or nuclear waste disposal, create the perfect circumstances for murder?
A: One of the things I love about writing mysteries is that I’ve learned you can couch a discussion of important social issues within the context of a good, compelling mystery, and even people who don’t necessarily agree with your point of view will still read you and get the idea. How often is it that you have an opportunity to stand on a soapbox and spout off without giving the other side an opportunity for rebuttal? I absolutely love that about what I do. So, yes, I often choose a social issue and the story rises out of that. There are so many important and controversial topics, especially when dealing with the treatment of Native communities in our nation, that I’ll never run dry of inspiration.
Q: Who’s your favorite minor character in the series?
A: I don’t think there are any minor characters in the stories. But there are some terrific characters who’ve come and gone. Of these, my favorite would be Dina Willner, a PI out of Chicago who helps Cork in two novels: Mercy Falls and Copper River. She’s smart, attractive, capable, and there’s clearly chemistry between her and Cork. I get lots of notes from fans asking for her to be brought back. We’ll see.
Q: Who do you consider your most menacing villain?
A: The most deliciously evil character I’ve created, and I’ve created many evil antagonists, is Abigail Hornett, matriarch of the religious fanatics in Northwest Angle. Those who believe they are the chosen of God and use that belief as sword and shield in t
heir justification of violence are, in my own opinion, among the scariest people on earth.
Q: Which villain was the most fun to write? Or do you not find them very much fun, given the serious nature of the crimes in the series?
A: The challenge in writing villains is to make them feel real to readers. No human being is all black or all white, and if you write them as such, you’ve lost your readers. In my own belief system, no one is born bad. Destructive natures are shaped by environment and experience, from something terrible in a human being’s past, and so it’s always an interesting journey trying to get at and write about what it is that shaped a person in a way that makes him or her do evil things.
Q: What is the weirdest or most surprising question anyone has ever asked you at a book event? What is the most thought-provoking?
A: I was asked once if I would ever consider putting zombies in my Cork O’Connor novels. I replied that I would not. There are already enough of those in politics.
Q: Are there any revelations or surprises you can hint at in your upcoming novel, Manitou Canyon?
A: There are several additions to the Cork O’Connor clan in Manitou Canyon. Some are expected, but there are a couple of really nice surprises. One in particular will take Cork down some interesting roads in the future.
Complete Your Collection of Cork O’Connor Mysteries
Iron Lake
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Boundary Waters
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Purgatory Ridge
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Blood Hollow
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Mercy Falls
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Copper River
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Thunder Bay
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Red Knife
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Heaven's Keep
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Vermilion Drift
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Northwest Angle
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Trickster's Point
* * *
Tamarack County
* * *
Windigo Island
* * *
Manitou Canyon
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A World Beyond Cork: Don't miss your chance to read Ordinary Grace, the spectacular Edgar Award-winning standalone novel by William Kent Krueger
Ordinary Grace
* * *
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by William Kent Krueger
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ebook edition July 2016
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Interior design by Dana Sloan
Cover design by Emma A. Van Deun
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All photos courtesy of the author
ISBN 978-1-5011-4004-4 (ebook)
William Kent Krueger, The World of Cork O'Connor
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